


All That I Am, Sweetheart, All That I Wish

by GodmotherToClarion



Series: Sped By Flame [4]
Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Alternate Universe - Splash Free, Death, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, M/M, Marriage, Memories, Old Age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 04:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16779700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GodmotherToClarion/pseuds/GodmotherToClarion
Summary: "The heavens may shatter and blossom again if they please, but I shall never forsake you! for I have been yours since the day small Milad came to us in the summer, and so I shall be unto the world’s ending!"In which love in death is as fierce as love in life, and Haru takes his leave.





	All That I Am, Sweetheart, All That I Wish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hapgen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hapgen/gifts).



> This is an epilogue of sorts, but you don't need to read the previous installments. :) Enjoy!

_“Busy old fool,” gasped Haru, mustering a smile through the sweat on his brow and cheeks. “I do not care for him. Makoto, sweetheart, do not cry—”_

_*_ _*_ _*_

_“Wait for me, my love,” he begged, shaking from head to foot as he tugged the cold hands to his mouth. “Wait, Haru-chan, I pray you—”_

_*_ _*_ _*_

There was little to be said, after the funeral.

Makoto himself had not lingered to watch the pyre burst into flames; he had kissed his husband’s palms and departed, feeling as if he had been removed from the realm of Qasr as wholly as Haru was, parted from life and all his kin by the grief of the night before. He left the terrace and went back up to his chambers, which looked much the same as they had before Haru’s illness. His ivory combs lay before the looking-glass, sparkling with strands of silvery hair wound between their teeth; the Western saber in its carven sheath was mounted over the fireplace, for all the world as if the king it had served would return to wield it again. Makoto turned away from the blade the moment his eyes fell upon it, going instead to the bed and the nightstand to the left of the mattress.

_I will never lie in a grave, Makoto._

“No, _aynee_ ,” he murmured, pressing the jeweled hand-mirror to his lips. “I swore it. I have never crossed you, save that once in Martulah long ago. You were born of the sands of the _sahra,_ and there you shall have your rest.”

He drew the blankets over his waist and lay with his head on Haru’s pillow, sweet as ever with the fragrance of jasmine and almond that had filled his husband’s bathwater. For a while he thought he felt the warmth of a slender body at his back, and the touch of long-fingered hands on his arm; when they faded he heard a strain of laughter, bubbling over the lilting accents of the Sahrastani tongue. Haru had all but ceased to speak it in the three years following their marriage, and though his voice had grown lighter as it sang in the Eastern language it never quite forgot the gentle speech of the West.

“It is only a dream, my darling,” whispered Makoto, breathing the scent of long tunics stitched in blue as surely as if his heart still lay beside him. “Come to sleep, Haru-chan.”

* * *

_“When did you learn to fence, sweetheart?”_

_He turned and saw his beloved—young and dark-haired and living again, quick in his movements as he had not been for the past fifteen years at least—and broke the silence with a laugh, crossing the armory to sit at Haru’s left and lay his brown head on his shoulder._

_“Later than you did, I’ll wager, what with Aki for a brother. But my mother taught me herself beginning in my seventh year—it is why I strike further than most Qasrians do. I could not quite break myself of the Martulian stance when I came under Master Mikoshiba’s tutelage, but I suppose it is better so. What of it, rouhiya?”_

_“From your grace I thought perhaps you had begun sooner than I, that is all. You are the fairest thing I’ve laid eyes upon, when you look out from the shield in your helm.”_

_“Haru!” he cried, flushing scarlet as Haru bent to kiss his burning cheek._

_“Oh, don’t mind us,” grumbled Seijurou, grinning like a cat before dropping his shawl over Haru’s face and darting into the corridor. “Carry on as you please, my lords, with half the folk in your regiment to see your foolishness.”_

_“Shall we go, then?” asked Haru, long after the general’s hasty footfalls had died away down the passage. “Milad will finish with his lessons before long, and we must be ready for luncheon before then.”_

_“As you will, my heart.”_

* * *

He woke with a cry, clutching at the blankets beside him in vain until his fingers lit on a sturdy shoulder. For a moment he could scarcely believe it, until the figure at his left turned away to light the oil-lamp by which Haru liked to read in the evenings. At the sight of the careworn face before him he crumpled and wept like a child, sobbing into his son’s white robe as Milad held him near.

“What shall I do?” he cried. “Milad, _radhiy_ , I cannot—oh, _Goddess,_ I beg of you—”

“Oh, Father,” croaked Milad, and by the glow of the dancing flame Makoto saw his daughter-in-law stirring slightly in the chair at the foot of the bed, where she lay with her head on the clothes-chest and her red hair disheveled on the sheets.

“Aisha-chan,” breathed Makoto, blinking swiftly until he saw a child where the woman had been. “Aisha-chan, how come you here—”

* * *

_“Who shall tell him, do you think?” asked Haru, sighing as they peered round yet another corner. “He would murder us both if he knew our son had his sights set upon his niece.”_

_“Milad is only three, my love, and Rin has a daughter of his own,” said Makoto. He laughed at the thought, for on the day the twins were born Rin had drunk himself sick on mead, and then fainted in a heap on the hearthrug when Sakura presented him with two babies instead of one. “He is already fretting about suitors, and the babe is just three months old.”_

_“There is some comfort in that,” smiled the younger prince, taking Makoto’s hand and tucking it into the pocket of his gown. A moment later he stopped and squinted at the end of the hallway, from whence the sound of childish footsteps echoed forth like a song._

_“He shall not escape again,” vowed the Qasrian under his breath, creeping past the wall-sconces until he lit upon his laughing son, who was toddling down the passage with a red-haired baby tied fast to the sling on his back._

_“Milad!” cried Haru, throwing up his hands and whisking the children into his arms. “How many times must I tell you, sweetheart—you_ cannot _go to the nursery and kidnap Aisha from her cot because it suits you to do it!”_

_“Milad’s baby, Mama,” protested the tot, putting out his tongue at his father. “Mine.”_

_“She belongs to Gou and Sei, radhiy,” chuckled Makoto, as Gou bounced into the corridor with Toraichi riding on her back. “Here you are, Gou.”_

_Gou sighed and reclaimed her daughter with a grin, fighting back a storm of mirth as Milad began to pout. “What is the matter, Milad-chan?”_

_“Don’t take Baby away,” he begged, plucking at the hem of her skirts with tears welling up in his eyes. “She wants to stay with me, too.”_

_To Makoto’s astonishment Aisha whimpered at the sound of Milad’s weeping, straining in her mother’s arms until Gou set her down to walk. She made her way to Milad on legs that had not quite yet learned to stumble more than a step or two, clutching the front of his little coat until he sniffed and smiled again._

_“I suppose he shall just have to sleep in her crib, then,” sighed Gou, as Haru marched down the corridor to the nursery with Milad on his left hip and Aisha on his right. “Thank Heaven Sei built it wide enough for them both.”_

_“He did say he wanted to marry her last night, when he was in his bath,” mused Makoto. “Haru-chan nearly dropped him back into the tub when he heard it.”_

_“Don’t tell Rin,” warned Haru._

_Makoto burst into laughter._

_*_ _*_ _*_

“Ought we to fetch Uncle Rei, do you think?”

“No, my love,” came the voice of his son, drifting in the shadows above him. “His heart is steady, and he must have rest before we wake him again.”

“Goddess have mercy,” said Aisha—Aisha as dear as daughter, who had been so small and delicate when Haru first held her long ago. Milad had fallen in love at first sight, though neither of the two recalled it; the family had treasured the tale long after the children grew tired of hearing it, whispering down the table on their marriage-day to see the blush steal up into Milad’s crimson face.

“Where is your _aita_ , Milad?” breathed Makoto. “He has been away too long, my son. Where has he gone?”

“Father,” choked Milad. “Oh, Papa, he—”

“You need not worry,” sighed the king, slipping back onto his pillows as he let go of Milad’s hand. “He told me that, too. Long ago in Sahrastan, the winter I ran away from court to ask for his hand in marriage. Do you remember the story?”

“Aye, I do,” said the prince, sobbing a laugh. “I remember, Papa.”

* * *

_“Mother told me you burn your dead, rather than laying them to rest in catacombs,” said Makoto, wrapping his arms round Haru’s waist and setting his chin on his shoulder. “Why is that, my darling?”_

_“It is part of the Western vow to the Goddess, dearheart,” smiled the Iwatobian. “In our worship we hold faith that we shall have the chance to walk under Heaven again, to taste the sunlight anew until our spirits are wholly spent. It is thus that the dead are burned, to strike them free so they might go to seek a new shape as they please.”_

_“That is a promise dearer than all I have heard of Paradise,” wondered the prince, tucking small Milad into his lap with a kerchief of blackberry oatcakes. “Is it just so, then? One moment in one body, and waking again in another?”_

_“I do not rightly know,” admitted Haru. “Such a question would be better put to the loremasters, I think. But I would wait, if I had the power to do so, until all whom I loved could seek the next life beside me.”_

_“Promise me you shall, if my stars are cruel enough to see you go before me,” whispered Makoto. “I shall have a pyre to match yours, then, for I would sell my heart in a minute to know you again.”_

_“You ought not to think of such things,_ shin’ainaru-ko _,” chided the Iwatobian. “We are newly betrothed, amarya, and I am not yet twenty; it is foolishness to talk of death, when you are so soon to wed the loveliest youth in Sahrastan. Or did you only speak from the joy of receiving my ring that day?”_

_“Never, Haru-chan! I have always thought so, even before I knew how dearly I loved you.”_

_“Truly? When, then?”_

_“It was two weeks before the festival,” came the answer, followed by a wistful sigh. “Just after the healers permitted me to leave the infirmary and return to my chambers. I could not bear to sleep alone, and went to your quarters instead—and there I found you wrapped in the quilts with Milad half-asleep in your arms, singing the lay of Dahab-E-Noor so softly that none save he and I could hear you. I could not look away, Haru-chan, for in all my life I had never glimpsed a vision half so fair.”_

_“That is better, my love,” laughed Haru. “Now let us go to fetch supper, before Nagisa eats it all.”_

* * *

“Arise, my heart,” came the kindly voice. “You have lain asleep too long, and I would rather see you awake.”

He stirred and opened his leaf-green eyes, looking round in bewilderment at the stretch of sand where he lay, until—

“Haru!” he cried, hurling himself into his husband’s arms as Haru laughed and drew him closer still. “Oh, Haru-chan, I thought—I thought you had gone, that I should never see you again—”

“Never that, my darling,” murmured the Westerner. His body was hale and well-muscled as it had been in his youth, and his long plait of coiling hair shone black and smooth like the twilight. “I swore to wait, do you not remember? I promised to linger between this life and the next, so we should go forth together.”

“Thank you,” Makoto sobbed, kissing the sunbrowned face from brow to chin as Haru began to cry. “Thank you, _amarya,_ thank you—oh, thank the heavens, it is true!”

“Of course it is true,” choked Haru, mustering a smile as Makoto kissed him again. “I bid fare-well to Sei not long ago, and we shall see him soon. He was as cross as a bear to find I was the first after him, and I scarcely know how long he scolded before he passed on.”

“You met Sei?” gasped the other, looking up into dark-blue eyes with such joy that Haru wept harder still. “Oh, bless you, sweetheart!”

“You need not go yet, must you?” begged the younger of the two. “Stay beside me until you wake, and do not you dare follow me too soon! It will take more than a fever to part you from the world of the living, and I would not have you take leave of Milad so soon.”

“It was more than a fever, darling,” cried Makoto. “That was how it began, aye. But then it grew worse, and Rei could not save you.”

“It was a better death than men much worthier than I have had,” Haru soothed. “A plague upon Sardahanian winters, say I! But I have died worse than that in my time, _shin’ainaru-ko_ , and so have you.”

“I suppose so,” sighed his beloved, turning his eyes to the setting sun as it struck the scarlet horizon. “How long have we here before I must go, my love?”

“As long as you wish,” came the murmur, followed by the touch of salt-damp lips against Makoto’s forehead. “And you need never fear waking, for I shall wait night after night until you join me beyond.”

“Shall we remember this?” breathed the Qasrian. “I cannot forget you, for it would ruin me to go without you again.”

“Perhaps, and perhaps not. But I found you in the East when by rights we ought never to have met at all, and I should know to find you still if you were born a fish who dwelled at the bottom of the sea. Keep faith, _rouhiya!_ our fates shall bring us together as long as we walk the earth, and after, if there is such a place.”

“I love you so, _aynee_ ,” said Makoto, pressing the vow into Haru’s cheek until he flushed like a rose. “I will not forget that, at least.”

“No, you will not,” Haru smiled. “Now lie back, my heart, so we may watch the stars for a while.”

They lay there together in silence until the sky was draped in black, counting the points of silver that bloomed overhead in the darkness. At length Makoto began to grow weary, falling into slumber on his husband’s breast as the Westerner sank back to rest in the sand beneath him.

“Death is nothing, _amarya_ ,” whispered Haru, brushing a lock of dark-brown hair back from Makoto’s brow. “This is but one of many lives we have led, _jahan’nad,_ and I shall see you again!”

  
  



End file.
